next thing im looking at is a GPU thats not exspensive but will give me some acelration CUDA apps, but as im only just learing AE (not shore if i want to switch to it for making animations) any advice is wellcome

ps finaly how do i clean the inside? it's got a lot of dust buneys the guy id got it from was just using it for logic 8 and seemed not to have cleaned it ever, tho i got the full boxed copy of logic 8 with the mac which was cool
(got it for £375, i think a good price :P)

As far as sourcing RAM goes I'd look at Crucial...I've been buying their RAM for years. It comes with a no quibble lifetime warranty, and if you run the little tool on your newbie, it will give you all the options and configuration info you need prior to purchase.

Congratulations on your new machine and welcome to the site. I've been buying my RAM from Data Memory Systems (DMS) since the mid 1980s. They say they have a lifetime warranty though I wouldn't know because I've never had a RAM module fail Anyway, RAM packages are small, and I can't imagine shipping would be to expensive to the UK. I would also buy the correct RAM for the machine I own. Look here:

Get RAM from eBay. You only need to know what you're looking for.
PC26400 (or 5300) FB DIMM 1R or 2R - not the 4R with heatsinks, flat or Apple-like.

You can use 667 MHz (PC25300) memory without problem. Performance difference is negligible. Hynix, Samsung, Micron/Crucxial, Kingston will work. Don't buy 1GB sticks, rather 2 or 4GB ones.
Such as these should be good. PC25300 2Rx4 i.e. 667 Mhz dual rank. You can get 16GB for 100 quid shipped.

relay cool to know the flat heat sinks are safe, found a post on the apple forum with a guy who installed 8GB sticks of 667Mhz RAM (for a total of 64GB) and confirms it's running A-OK, some pics of the ram on the second page show the model info and flat heat sinks.https://discussions.apple.com/thread...art=0&tstart=0

so i think ill aim to get 8GB in 2GB sticks(or 4GB if it's cheeper) and that will give me 2 empty slots in case i need more (as i have two 1Gb sticks already)

next thing im looking at is a GPU thats not exspensive but will give me some acelration CUDA apps, but as im only just learing AE (not shore if i want to switch to it for making animations) any advice is wellcome

Congratulations getting this trusty machine! Today I swapped my ATI 5870 for a shiny new NVIDIA GTX 680 Mac Edition. It wasn't cheap, I wasn't sure, but boy what a difference: gaming in bootcamp is fun again, I can use CUDA in Premiere CS 5.5 and best of all: my Mac Pro is quiet again! I guess this is because the card is able to clock down when used lightly, i.e. surfing the web etc.

I hesitated because of BareFeats' GPU Testings, which showed no big gains for the 3,1 Mac Pro in Apps like Motion, but I would now recommend this card. Great having all these options now - even for a 5+ year old machine

Some bad news, Komputerbay is messing me around which is a shame, ordered 8GB of ram and only 4GB came in the post.
their customer service has not been very helpful to say the least, got the ram on Tuesday and they have yet to tell me why i only got 4GB of ram or when i will get the next 4GB.
all they have done is ask for some photos of the ram and ask for me to try it out to see if it's working which is kind of avoiding that half my ram is missing (also until it's resolved im not taking it out of the plastic it's in in case that gives me problems later)

ill get back to you once it's resolved.

any advice?

edit- told now that my ram will be sent to me, seems to have gone smooth once i mentioned getting in contact with amazon.

Some bad news, Komputerbay is messing me around which is a shame, ordered 8GB of ram and only 4GB came in the post.
their customer service has not been very helpful to say the least, got the ram on Tuesday and they have yet to tell me why i only got 4GB of ram or when i will get the next 4GB.
all they have done is ask for some photos of the ram and ask for me to try it out to see if it's working which is kind of avoiding that half my ram is missing (also until it's resolved im not taking it out of the plastic it's in in case that gives me problems later)

ill get back to you once it's resolved.

any advice?

edit- told now that my ram will be sent to me, seems to have gone smooth once i mentioned getting in contact with amazon.

Sad to hear. I bought all my sticks from their ebay-shop. No problems.

well iv got the final 4GB of ram today and stuck all 8GB in to the mac pro.
i may have just had bad luck, with the ram seller (tho i did notice that the price went up from £50 to £71 after i complained so a bit odd dont know if i need to read in to that or not)

now system profiler shows all the ram (all 10GB ) at the slower speed but see's it all, using MemTest http://osxdaily.com/2011/05/03/memtest-mac-ram-test/
to check the ram and while it's slow compared to when i did it with only 2GB of ram it's almost done the first set of test's.
hardware monitor readings during memTest show, memory bank a - b is about 38c-43c and memory module A1 60c,A2 63c,A3 67c,A4 68c,B1 74c,B2 80c
do those temps look good?

so looking good now iv just got to pick up a 2TB drive (a WDgreen or WDblack i think) and a GPU, thinking about the nvidia gtx 640/650 (is it worth looking at the older 540/560 on ebay?) as i dont want to spend to much but still want some power, any advice on that front?
is ATI worth looking at too?

thanks for the tip Korican100, i still have 2 spare slots so i have room to expand.
as im moving up from a dual core macbook pro 2.6ghz just using more than 2 cores will 'rock my world' (bad joke but it's true) so if 10Gb give me 5 cores of render speed in Adobe Cs6 video apps ill be super happy.
(tho i think you need 1-2GB per core + ram for Adobe apps so ill play with ram settings once i get to it)

i assume now i have some ram my nvidia GT120 512mb is what's holding me back.
so ill have to look in to what GPU to get, i think i want a nvidia for adobe apps but i understand that ATI are better at openCL apps (finalcut x,motion any more?) so all and any advice is wanted.

i mostly work in photoshop Cs6 and final cut 7 (so no GPU problems there with the GT120), im looking in to learning Adobe after effects/adobe premiere & apple motion to see which works best for me (which may need something a bit newer). maybe even a light look at final cut X and maybe a few light games on the side (but thats not a factor in buying a GPU just a bonus)

second hand GPU's are fine with me if it's a good deal.
do you rate the nvidia gtx 640/650 as valid options?

edit -
found the EVGA GTX 550 TI 1GB for £77, is that a good option?

edit 2 -
been reading on adobe's site and now im confused, do i even need a CUDA card for AE Cs6?
or is it best to have one in case i want to use adobe premiere.
is a ATI card of value/use with adobe Cs6 video apps or am i just being all newb and over thinking it?